They have filed an official complaint to the International Court of Justice requesting the ICJ prosecute Saudi leaders for committing war crimes in the impoverished nation. The Court plans to launch a probe and publish its findings soon. A few basic points can help decipher the new case:
1. The wealthy prince-playboys in Riyadh claim they only target the resistance group of Ansarullah and its positions while media reports suggest otherwise. The Saudi airstrikes, in alliance with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Egypt, include civilian targets. So far, they have killed and injured thousands of civilians, mostly women and children.
2. Israel is allied with the Saudi bloc, which is supporting Al-Qaeda and ISIL. The new Israel-Saudi bloc sustains the terrorist groups and their crimes against humanity. Israel assists the Saudis in the illegal war on Yemen too. These strange bedfellows identify Iran as their chief regional adversary and support proxy wars against Iranian allies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
3. While on the surface Saudi Arabia and its US-allied cohorts repudiate terrorism, they are the ones that are providing overt and covert support to Al-Qaeda and ISIL to advance the cause of breaking the so-called “Shia Crescent”. They have been joined by Israel, which has taken the position that Iran and its allies are more dangerous than the terrorist goons. This is while there has been no Iranian march of conquest into Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut or Sanaa.
4. Reflecting the interests of the Israeli-Saudi bloc, the United States provides direct support to the aerial campaign against Yemen. They openly help the Saudi bloc bomb the impoverished nation and commit atrocities with little care for international law. All this and many others suggest that the ICJ probe should also include the top leaders of the Saudi bloc, the US administration and Israel.
At a general level, the Saudi bloc has linked their futures fatally to ISIL, Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. They claim they are bypassing Yemen’s sovereignty to protect its people but prevent the delivery of humanitarian aid to the war-torn country – while Red Cross officials express growing alarm at the number of civilians being killed and wounded in the attacks. Worse yet, these war criminals appear ambivalent about the civilian death toll.
The case is indeed noteworthy, as in many respects it represents the closest the International Court of Justice has come to actually basing its judgment on the enforcement of a nation’s interest. That’s the only way to generate far-reaching legal effects and be true to its own traditions.
This is as it should be. The greatest tragedy is to be a reluctant guardian and delay justice for the victims of this condemnable criminality, which is not sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council.
